OK. I intensely dislike Trump. I think he is a horrible choice for President and completely unfit for the position. But I also don't think his college football example holds up for shit. Football Coach is a profession, "Politician" should not be one. I don't want a professional politician. I want a person that has real world experience so they can understand the real world affects their legislation actually has. But having watched the CGP video, it seems unlikely it will ever happen.

These things seem to continue to ignore Jill Stein.

And in doing so, they miss an important point: Johnson is the "spoiler candidate" for TRUMP. In other words, the chances of votes for Johnson swinging the plurality of votes in a hotly contested state in favor of Clinton are massively higher than swinging such a state into favoring Trump.

Stein is the spoiler candidate for Clinton. But die-hard Democrats should be pleased with her poll numbers being low, which suggests that fewer usually-Democrat voters are looking for an alternative option than usually-Republican voters. In other words, the Democrat party is currently more unified than the Republican party.

...But before patting themselves on the back too hard, they should remember that perhaps the only reason that their historically disliked candidate is more unifying than the GOP option is that he is even MORE historically disliked. A dubious distinction at best.

I think I'll stick with my protest vote (for Stein), thank you very much.

Hillary is so disliked she has to get her husband and this bitch and Bernie to get you to vote for her.

I'm not a liberal, nor a conservative. I'm a pragmatic moderate.

Of course, ANYONE to the left of you is a "shit liberal". There are more of you every day because the electorate is being polarized.

Unfortunately for you, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more "shit liberals" everyday than people of your "ilk". Also, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who aren't of your ilk than are, and you keep pushing everyone who isn't as irrationally conservative as you away to the Democratic Party.

Remember, people like you caused Trump to get nominated instead of Kasich or Bush, and you might have won with either of them vs Clinton. But no, you're a man of principle! And those principles led you to Donald Trump, the candidate who could never be elected, even with all the political winds from circumstance at his back. Even against the second most disliked major party nominee, only to Trump himself!

I don't expect you to bow down. I expect you to drive yourself crazy as you'll continue to fight the insane fight while you lose election after election, and destroy the Republican Party as you keep it hostage under the threat of primarying any rational members they have left, handing election after election to Democrats until conservatives and the Republican Party become irrelevant and powerless.

That's what you can do. You keep that fight up! Never give up, never surrender! No matter how far you feel yourself sinking in the quicksand, between millennials completely rejecting your ideology, growing populations of minorities who reject you, demographics that show that eventually large electoral vote rich states like Texas will become competitive and will flip and turn blue. Nevermind the GOP has managed to win the popular vote one time in the last six elections, soon to be a seventh. Next time, keep thinking going down this path will work!

But don't you stop fighting! Keep struggling! I expect nothing less! This isn't about this election anymore. It's about wreaking havoc against your own side for decades to come! Nominate Trump in 2020 again! Primary the traitor Paul Ryan!

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes Trump is chest thumper.

HE is giving people what they want to hear. He is addressing the problems that our government lies about and fails to fix.

He represents the outsider anti establishment, like Bernie, who got cheated out of the race.


Hillary is unpersonable and disliked. She and her name carries a lot of baggage. There is a lot of distrust hanging over her. Then again "what difference does it make"


Will Trump do what he says? Who knows - It sounds like he will.

Will Hillary deliver? She represent the political status quo so it is doubtful things would get better.

Trump is no bible thumping conservative. The choice is democrat A or Democrat B.

Nah, I just dislike hypocrites, but i'm probably expecting too much out of monster truck people.

Ugh. I really dislike Hillary. And I really dislike that the alternative is... Trump.


(I'm also starting to dislike the way that much of the news-reporting is framed as an attempt to persuade, rather than to inform.)

I think she is WAY more disliked now by the general public then she was before the primaries started. Also so few knew much about Bernie at the get go. I doubt she would fare well against Sanders if they had a redo. Although those super delegates may make it close. Without them she would have probably lost and in a redo without them she would get crushed im guessing. I hate her so much (more than trump as i just laugh at his nonsense) but still am more comfortable with the same trending downward shit we have had forever (Clinton) then something super unpredictable and ugly(Trump). But that's just me and my cushy life and opinion.

@notarobot
But we had a nonshit sandwich candidate...Sanders. I'm still astonished that so many people voted for a toss up election with a horrifically disliked candidate over a statistical landslide victory with a revolutionary candidate lacking in closeted skeletons or innumerable examples of his dishonesty. I simply don't understand what they were thinking.

Ugh. Look, I don't like Trump. But however bad he is, comparing him to Hillary in terms of better/worse is like being forced to eat a sandwich made of pigeon turds or rat feces. They're both terrible. They're both sandwiches made of shit.

Being a better tasting shit sandwich doesn't change the shit sandwich from being a shit sandwich. You can try to mask the flavor with hot sauce or swiss cheese, but it's still a shit sandwich.

Hillary is an awful candidate. The only way she'd ever have a chance at winning it to be put up against someone as weak as Trump.

And vice-versa. Trump could never stand a chance unless his opponent was as disliked as Hillary.

But here we are. Shit sandwich vs. Shit sandwich.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and list reasons why Hillary is terrible. Google can offer plenty of criticisms of her---and to be clear, don't think I'm coming at this by suggesting that Trump is some kind of saint. I. Don't. Like. Him. But Trump is doing one thing right, that I don't see Hillary doing. He's engaging with the "deplorables" of the nation.

This doesn't make Trump less of a shit sandwich (Did I mention that I don't like Trump? I don't like Trump.) but it could be the difference between Shit Sandwich, and President Shit Sandwich. (Sorry!)

To explain where I'm coming from on this, see Johnathan Pie's rant on Brexit. Basically, the "Keep things as they are" campaign was dismissive of the "deplorables" of the nation. Look how that vote turned out.

The thesis of that rant is basically that for many people the Brexit vote boiled down to:

"If you've got nothing, why would you vote for things to stay as they are? At least with uncertainty, there's some hope that things might change."

Hillary, for many people, means "Maintaining the status quo." For this group, Trump is at least a different flavour of shit sandwich--which might just put him in the White House. (Sorry.)

...

Here's the link to J. Pie's rant:

http://videosift.com/video/Jonathan-Pie-on-Brexit

This, to me, is the apogee of the divergence between kickstarter culture and product-buying culture - wanting to put in the money just to see someone do something interesting or something that you think is worthwhile. I would buy Stellaris and never play it, because I like what that game is doing, but I would steal Deus Ex Mankind Divided and play it to conclusion because I really dislike what that game's doing, ie a soulless rehash of the previous game.

I'm not sure that that necessarily makes for healthy markets.

I kinda dislike Ableton Live though some people are incredibly creative with it... like Flying Lotus.

1. I tend not to like lists like these, so I always ensure that at least some answers are completely made up. In protest I will not reformat this list to make it more readable.
2. I was quite good at fencing. I was Irish national sabre champion, but that's a lot less impressive than it sounds.
3. I won Miss Fencing Intervarsities 3 years running. I'm male.
4. I'm a Monty Python fan to an unhealthy degree. I co-wrote the first Python FAQ online, based on actual questions that were asked frequently.
6. I have called every living member of Monty Python 'Michael' except Michael Palin. I called him Terry. None of them called me on it.
7. I have what amounts to a secret crush on someone here on the sift. They always say what I'm thinking, but far more eloquently than I ever can. I grin when they upvote me.
8. I have a Scaramanga-style extra nipple.
9. I have a son. My girlfriend's waters broke while I was watching Alien. I'm more proud of the second part than the first... lots of other people have tiny pet humans.
10. I was once kicked in the head by Armand Assante (a b-list-ish actor).
11. I can sing the names of about 20 particularly nasty diseases.
12. I'm batman.
13. I've been online since the 80s, but at this stage the web is pretty much read-only for me. I'm more active here on the sift than anywhere else, and that's not saying much.
14. I was in Russia during the 'invasion of Georgia' in 2008. In fact, I was in the mountains bordering the two countries and saw the situation almost first-hand. Before then I had little confidence in the news we get here in the west; now I have almost none. Stuff broadcast as fact was (to me) easily proven false at the time, and the subsequent UN report backs up my side of the story.
15. I teach tai chi.
16. One of my happiest memories is not sleeping with a hot (and very cool) Norwegian woman.
17. I once ran a marathon backwards. It's not as easy as it sounds.
18. My grandmother owned race horses, including one who holds a significant record in Cheltenham. She's quite famous here in Ireland (to a certain generation at least).
19. Online (and sometimes off) I tend to use anagrams of my name. The idea is that it's hard to find Noims from my real name (until someone ruins that), but not too hard to go the other direction. My avatar is based on the same principle. There are at least 3 other Noimses online, but I was the first.
20. My favourite piece of software is the vi editor (specifically gvim). I have no idea what my favourite book, music, or non-python film are.
21. I'm a keen gamer, but most offline. I hate Steam. I've been playing Nethack since the 80s, and still play in the devnull competition yearly... it's the longest running online game tournament there is.
22. I think one of the worst facts in the world is that marketing works.
23. I was in a metal band called the Bubonic Duck-Fuckers from Hell (BDF).
24. I used to be big into RPGs (role playing - not rockets). I once got first prize in 3 games in a single weekend convention with 4 game slots.
25. I love the number 12, and know all the powers up to 12^12. Consequently I dislike the number 5. I strongly tend to favour multiples/powers of 12 over those of 5.

BULLSHIT. *waits for the jesus bomb* Oh, it was bullshit. Funny. Freaking Penn, you dick. lol!!!

Anyway, his first statement aside, isn't this how legit atheists have always thought? And by that I mean, atheists who practice what they preach and love other humans, as every mammal should. Shitting on belief systems but NEVER NEVER hating the actual person? That's how I function.

I always imagined it was simply the projections of the insecure haters of atheists that projected this perception that we hate Muslims. I never understood how atheism could mean anything other than love. That's why I became an atheist in the frickin' first place, because I realized God isn't loving if he could send people to hell. And from there it simply followed logically towards the absence of God.

I have friends from Malaysia and Iran who clearly CLEARLY have Islamic backgrounds -- but they're badass Americans and beyond that they're human goddamnit -- and I love them as much as I love my Jewish, Atheist, and Christian friends. I can't say that they aren't Muslim, because I don't want to assume anything and I don't want them to be in trouble if they aren't. But yeah, I love all my friends.

And you know what, I love bobknight and that piss flavoured cotton candy Trump thing, even though they both project hate onto us for being liberal. Honestly, I love you bob, and we aren't terrorists and neither is every Muslim. I love you -- even though you support America's terrorists, the police. And I love the police, despite my dislike of SOME (well, maybe MOST) of their views about the world. <3

Isn't it so much more fun to actually exchange information and points of view, rather than getting snotty? I love it.

Maybe we are talking a bit at cross purposes. (Like, that has never happened before on teh intertubes, right?)

I try not to "re-edit" or "re-imagine" videos. I'm sure I do it -- I often do things that I later complain that other people do. This comment goes back more to your first response to me, however it applies to this comment, too. The idea that the video would be better if it this'd, or that'd, or it fails to do this other thing that it wasn't even trying to do. The concept of being conscious of "the bigger picture" is what I am addressing here.

However, isn't it just YOUR vision of what the bigger picture is that you say is missing? Because for me, I see a bigger picture being addressed quite nicely -- the vision that the video maker set out to address.

I wonder if the nebulous nature of your instinctive dislike to this video is indeed EXACTLY what the video maker was setting out to illuminate? Or rather, decided to be not obsequious to? Like women have been taught to be obsequious for eons?

I notice that you are sure that your difficult-to-describe instinctive reactions are "correct." What if it is actually your own internalized and unexamined sexism? I know you say thunderfoot bugs you, too. I also know that all my impassioned information about how women across cultures and time are expected to "tone it down" wasn't addressed in your response to me.

That is the elephant in the room here, as far as I am concerned. Sure, "condescension" is gender neutral. The whole video, though, is about sexism and the unconscious ways that it leaks out. I don't see you addressing that in your response -- except maybe, MAYBE, it is this nebulous and difficult thing you are struggling to understand and maybe, MAYBE, it needs to be examined and understood.

So maybe look at your feelings through that prism?

I say this as someone who has their own internalized sexism (towards men and women both) that I am constantly trying to identify and own and uproot. Racism, too. I so want to be the person who, like Stephen Colbert of old, who doesn't see race. And yet I do and I am mortified by it and I try to push through that lizard brain instinct and the training of my youth.

Something to think about maybe?

Or not. Maybe it just is as simple as you don't like the humor in the video, and I do. There are differences in taste, after all.

I suspect, though, that it is much more complex than that -- as you said, "maybe I'm going into it with the notion that I'm going to be offended anyway."